Multimodal spatial accessibility to the primary and secondary education network: case study Bucharest-Ilfov Region

Education is, or at least should be, a daily activity for the entire youth population. Given the clear role of education in human capital construction, the study of spatial accessibility to educational facilities is an important research subject. The present paper examines the multimodal spatial accessibility to the primary and secondary school network in Bucharest-Ilfov region, one of the most demographically and residentially dynamic regions of the country. By using 1 km2 population grid data and geocoded locations of school units, a travel time isochrone analysis has been computed for three modes of transportation: walking, private car and public transport, by using GIS analysis. All travel times have been calculated for five threshold intervals: 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 minutes and linked to the distribution of the school-age population. Results show that the school network broadly follows the spatial pattern of the youth population and that most children can reach the closest school within 10 minutes by all three transport modes. However, pronounced intra-metropolitan inequalities exist. Bucharest displays a compact configuration, with the vast majority of pupils located within a 5- to 10-minute travel time. At the same time, Ilfov County shows a more dispersed pattern, with a considerable number of school units requiring over 20 minutes to reach, especially when relying on public transport or walking. These findings highlight how rapid suburbanisation and uneven transport provision generate spatial disparities in effective access to compulsory education units, and underline the need to integrate school location planning into transport and housing policies.

A geo-big data approach to intra-urban food deserts: Transit-varying accessibility, social inequalities, and implications for urban planning

Social inequalities of park accessibility in Shenzhen, China: The role of park quality, transport modes, and hierarchical socioeconomic characteristics

The sum rate performance of cognitive multi-user massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) relay networks is investigated. Specifically, a secondary relay network is underlaid in the same cell of a primary multi-user network. Both primary and secondary networks are allowed to share the same frequency spectrum. Hence, the transmit power of the secondary relay network is constrained such that the interference inflicted at the primary network due to the secondary concurrent transmissions does not exceed a predefined interference temperature. Under the aforementioned system set-up, the asymptotic signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio and achievable sum rate expressions are derived for two specific antenna configurations at the relay, secondary and primary base-stations. Our asymptotic analysis reveals that the secondary relay network can be operated at its peak average transmit power level without degrading the performance of the primary network whenever the numbers of antennas at the relay, secondary and primary base-stations are allowed to grow without bound while keeping fixed ratios among them. Consequently, the asymptotic performance metrics for both primary and secondary networks become independent of the corresponding interference temperature. Furthermore, the intra-cell co-channel interference inflicted at the secondary network due to the primary network and vice-versa can be asymptotically mitigated. Therefore, massive MIMO technology can be exploited for successful deployments of cognitive relay networks with underlay spectrum sharing.

Access to the city: Mobility patterns, transport and accessibility in peripheral settlements of Dar es Salaam

The transport planning is essential to meeting passengers’ needs for fast, safe, and reliable transport. The research goals of this study are to determine the most suitable mode of transport between predetermined alternatives according the criteria related to the transport planning. The research method combines GIS analysis, SWOT analysis, BEM method, and PROMETHEE II method in an integrated approach for decision-making. The methodology is applied to the city of Peshawar city. It includes six steps. First, a passenger questionnaire is used to establish passenger preferences when making a trip in the city. Secondly, alternative modes of urban transportation are defined. In the case of Peshawar, the following alternatives are considered: a new BRT service, BRT with five additional stops, old bus service, wagon, carpooling, and Careem/Uber. Thirdly, there is GIS analysis to investigate the stops of the BRT alternative transportation. GIS and satellite analysis have been completed for each stop. Fourthly, criteria for the assessment of urban transport modes are determined based on SWOT analysis. A total of twenty four subcriteria are proposed. Fifthly, the best-worst method (BWM) which is based on linear programming method is applied to determine the weightings that should be given to the main criteria and subcriteria. Sixthly, alternative modes of transportation are ranked by applying preference ranking organization method for enrichment evaluations’ (PROMETHEE II) method. The results show that the main important criteria greater than 5% are small movement interval: S4 (6%), security: S7 (13%), reliability: S8 (8%), accessibility:O1 (15%), possibility of special services: O2 (5%), possibility of including insurance in the travel tariff: O3 (8%), possibility of the modernization of the infrastructure: O4 (7%), and environmental pollution: T3 (5%). The implications of this study propose a BRT service with five additional stops is the best urban transport plan for Peshawar. The originality of this research consists in integration of a strategic planning technique SWOT analysis, GIS analysis, and multicriteria analysis in complete methodology to evaluate traveler’s modes priority. The methodology used in this research can be applied to evaluate different transport alternatives for transport networks worldwide.

The relevance of accessibility in shaping transport planning has often been neglected, hampering on decisions to improve transport efficiency. This is increasingly becoming problematic, as they often impede on economic and technological developments. Many studies on accessibility assert that it is easier for public transport to reach an activity centre than it is for private transport. For this reason, the research compares travel time forecast and accessibility levels with private and public transports en route to commercial centres. The research involves a 21-day transport survey for private cars and public shuttles in Oforikrom district using Global Positioning System (GPS) probe to record the traffic performance indicators to be analyzed in a GIS environment. The results of the study display on a map the level of accessibility via the modes, and a comparative line plot of travel time with private and public transport. The study reveals that private cars in the district generally perform better than public shuttles on the level of accessibility, and travel time. The execution of the research shows that the convergence of choice of transport mode and travel time dynamics is crucial for policymakers to implement diverse transport modes and commuters to choose a mode that has low accessibility cost.

Transport systems offer substantially different services in city-suburb areas; this usually leads to different assumptions about user behaviour in transport mode choice. In this paper a simulation model is proposed to assess the effect of transport service policies on mode choice. The transport modes considered are public transport, including light rail transit (LRT) and bus, together with the private auto. In the three step traveler behaviour simulation model, the concept of generalised transport costs is used. Various transit incentives (fare, capacity, service quality, travel time, etc.) are proposed and their impacts on residents travel choice and suburban residential community form are quantified, using data on a typical city-suburb corridor in Beijing, China. The simulation results show that: (a) the fare reduction and capacity increase of public transport integrated with private car disincentives is necessary to improve system efficiency and suburb community attractiveness, particularly for those low income people; (b) without highway pricing, medium income residents will be encouraged to shift to private car while more high income persons might leave the suburb because of road congestion; (c) public transport improvement can attract more short and medium distance travelers, but the car users are not sensitive to travel distance.

Purpose This chapter focuses on strategies to initiate a shift in mobility behaviour away from private cars towards a combination of more environmentally friendly transport modes including public transport, ride- and car sharing or even completely carbon-free modes like walking and cycling. The requirement for such a shift is that people must be able to actually choose between different travelling options and combine them within an intermodal mobility network. Here, shared mobility has a considerable potential to fill the gap between public and individual transport options. Methodology/approach This chapter summarises results from different studies on shared mobility from the providers’, the users’ and the political perspective. The user’s perspective is based on an empirical study comparing car sharers’, car drivers’ and public transport users’ attitudes and mobility patterns. Findings The empirical findings from the case study have shown that shuttle trips by car in general, and to the train station in particular, are an important field of action for improving the environmental impact of intermodal trips. The study has also shown that car sharing enables people to live without a private car by using different transport modes for different purposes. As the majority of car sharers report needing a car only one to three times a month, they have a very small carbon footprint compared to the average car owner. Social implications Mobility patterns are determined by local transport options as well as by personal routines. Hence, current changes due to new shared mobility options seem to have a considerable direct impact on how people organise their daily lives on the one hand and an indirect impact on their living costs on the other hand, since private cars have an important share of private household costs. Originality/value From an environmental perspective, any incentives to encourage people to choose alternative forms of transport over their private cars would seem to be particularly effective. Thus, understanding the behaviour and needs of multi- and intermodal travellers is an important step towards sustainable mobility. Acknowledging that most travellers still need a car every now and then, car sharing is an essential addition to public transport systems, supporting both public transport use and carbon-free mobility like walking and cycling.

The capacity scaling laws of two overlaid networks are investigated, which are located in the same area sharing the same wireless resources with different priorities. The primary network can be regarded as an existing communication system operated in a licensed band and, therefore, is assumed to operate in an order-optimal fashion to achieve its standalone capacity scaling law. The secondary cognitive network must keep its interference to the primary network below a certain threshold while at the same time maximizing its own throughput scaling law based on cognition information. The existing scaling results for cognitive networks inherently assume multihop communication, which is a restricted coding model. By contrast, in this paper, a general coding model is considered without any specific physical layer coding assumptions. The capacity scaling exponents for both networks are analyzed when the numbers of primary nodes n, primary base stations l, which support the communication between primary nodes, and secondary nodes m increase with the relations m = n <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">β</sup> , β > 1, and l = n <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">γ</sup> , 0 ≤ γ ≤ 1. For the extended network model, the capacity scaling exponents are completely characterized as max {2-α/2, 1/2, γ} and max{2-α/2, 1/2} for the primary and secondary networks respectively, where α > 2 denotes the path-loss exponent. That is, the capacity scaling laws for the primary and secondary networks are represented, respectively, by n <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">max{2-α/2,1/2,γ}±∈</sup> and m <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">max{2-α/2,1/2}±∈</sup> for α > 0 arbitrarily small. For the dense network model, when the primary network achieves its standalone capacity scaling exponent of 1, the secondary network is shown to achieve a scaling exponent of 1 - 1/(2β), which improves the previous scaling exponent of 1/2 achieved by multihop. For both models, it turns out that the conventional multihop approach is in general quite suboptimal.

Geographic access, including mode of transportation, to health care facilities remains understudied. To identify sociodemographic factors associated with public vs private transportation use to access health care and identify the respondent, trip, and community factors associated with longer distance and time traveled for health care visits. This cross-sectional study used data from the 2017 National Household Travel Survey, including 16 760 trips or a nationally weighted estimate of 5 550 527 364 trips to seek care in the United States. Households that completed the recruitment and retrieval survey for all members aged 5 years and older were included. Data were analyzed between June and August 2022. Mode of transportation (private vs public transportation) used to seek care. Survey-weighted multivariable logistic regression models were used to identify factors associated with public vs private transportation and self-reported distance and travel time. Then, for each income category, an interaction term of race and ethnicity with type of transportation was used to estimate the specific increase in travel burden associated with using public transportation compared a private vehicle for each race category. The sample included 12 092 households and 15 063 respondents (8500 respondents [56.4%] aged 51-75 years; 8930 [59.3%] females) who had trips for medical care, of whom 1028 respondents (6.9%) were Hispanic, 1164 respondents (7.8%) were non-Hispanic Black, and 11 957 respondents (79.7%) were non-Hispanic White. Factors associated with public transportation use included non-Hispanic Black race (compared with non-Hispanic White: adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 3.54 [95% CI, 1.90-6.61]; P < .001) and household income less than $25 000 (compared with ≥$100 000: aOR, 7.16 [95% CI, 3.50-14.68]; P < .001). The additional travel time associated with use of public transportation compared with private vehicle use varied by race and household income, with non-Hispanic Black respondents with income of $25 000 to $49 999 experiencing higher burden associated with public transportation (mean difference, 81.9 [95% CI, 48.5-115.3] minutes) than non-Hispanic White respondents with similar income (mean difference, 25.5 [95% CI, 17.5-33.5] minutes; P < .001). These findings suggest that certain racial, ethnic, and socioeconomically disadvantaged populations rely on public transportation to seek health care and that reducing delays associated with public transportation could improve care for these patients.

The choice of transportation mode is a crucial aspect of student mobility, especially in higher education environments with high levels of activity. Students tend to select transportation modes based on cost, travel time, convenience, accessibility, and safety. However, the high use of private vehicles among students has led to increased traffic congestion and road accidents, as seen in Bengkulu City. On the other hand, the suboptimal quality of public transportation services has contributed to the low interest of students in using public transport. This study aims to analyze the factors influencing the transportation mode choice of Universitas Bengkulu students and to evaluate the effectiveness of public transportation services. The method used is binary logistic regression analysis combined with stated preference to understand mode preferences based on cost and travel time comparisons. The resulting mode choice model indicates that students prefer private vehicles unless public transportation offers more competitive costs and travel times. The study results reveal that travel cost and time are the most influential factors in mode selection. If public transportation becomes more affordable or offers shorter travel times, students are more likely to switch to it. The study concludes that improving the quality of public transportation services, particularly in terms of cost efficiency and punctuality, can increase student interest in using public transport, thereby supporting a more sustainable transportation system.

BackgroundIn this paper, we demonstrate why and how both temporality and multimodality should be integrated in health related studies that include accessibility perspective, in this case healthy food accessibility. We provide evidence regarding the importance of using multimodal spatio-temporal accessibility measures when conducting research in urban contexts and propose a methodological approach for integrating different travel modes and temporality to spatial accessibility analyses. We use the Helsinki metropolitan area (Finland) as our case study region to demonstrate the effects of temporality and modality on the results.MethodsSpatial analyses were carried out on 250 m statistical grid squares. We measured travel times between the home location of inhabitants and open grocery stores providing healthy food at 5 p.m., 10 p.m., and 1 a.m. using public transportation and private cars. We applied the so-called door-to-door approach for the travel time measurements to obtain more realistic and comparable results between travel modes. The analyses are based on open access data and publicly available open-source tools, thus similar analyses can be conducted in urban regions worldwide.ResultsOur results show that both time and mode of transport have a prominent impact on the outcome of the analyses; thus, understanding the realities of accessibility in a city may be very different according to the setting of the analysis used. In terms of travel time, there is clear variation in the results at different times of the day. In terms of travel mode, our results show that when analyzed in a comparable manner, public transport can be an even faster mode than a private car to access healthy food, especially in central areas of the city where the service network is dense and public transportation system is effective.ConclusionsThis study demonstrates that time and transport modes are essential components when modeling health-related accessibility in urban environments. Neglecting them from spatial analyses may lead to overly simplified or even erroneous images of the realities of accessibility. Hence, there is a risk that health related planning and decisions based on simplistic accessibility measures might cause unwanted outcomes in terms of inequality among different groups of people.

This paper reports on commuters’ perceptions of bus and mini bus taxi service using an alternate to the most popular and commonly used service quality (SERVQUAL) instrument, namely The regional estuarine and coastal systems of the Americas (RECSA). From face-to-face interviews using a structured questionnaire to survey a convenience sample of 690 commuters at specifically selected mini-bus taxi and bus ranks using a commuter intercept survey, it was ascertained that overall the perceived quality of public bus transport services exceeded that of minibus taxis, despite the minibus taxis being the dominant mode of public transport. All the RECSA dimensions of transport service quality influenced the respondents’ perception of public bus service quality, whereas only three, namely reliability, affordability and extent of the service, influenced their perception of the minibus taxis service quality. To improve public road transport service quality, service providers should among others, implement scheduling systems to improve the punctuality of the service, invest in communication systems, introduce a comfort rating system, improve the arrival times at destinations and reduce journey length. They should also improve the condition of the minibus taxi shelters, increase the frequency of the service on certain routes especially during peak periods on weekdays, take commuters closer to their destination through modal integration and elimination of transfers, improve commuter safety, more especially by changing driver behaviour through focused safety and driver training programmes, and improve affordability and provide value for money service. The findings could also serve to inform public transport policy makers and providers, since a public transportation model and policy based on improving the perceived service dimensions is likely to increase the demand for public bus and minibus taxi transport and, reduce the use of private motor cars, thereby addressing the public road transport conundrum in Johannesburg in particular, and South Africa in general. Key words: Public transport service, minibus taxi service, public bus service transport service quality.

The National Capital Region of Delhi is ranked third as the largest built-up urban area in the world with a population density of about 14000 people per square kilometer. A complex system of public transit, paratransit and non-motorized transit system with last-mile connectivity is integral for such large areas to perform efficiently and promote sustainable transportation systems.To understand these urban processes and related space-syntax, it is crucial to understand which mode of public transport is preferred by the user and why. The user choices for a particular mode of transportation are primarily dependent on the time-cost relation of the mode. The present paper evaluates the efficiency of four modes of public and para-transit transport systems in the city of Delhi. The key modes identified are a combination of metro, bus, auto and taxi systems. The data on travel time and travel costs is collected and compared for the three selected routes. This shall be done by comparing four modes on three routes to generate 12 permutations. The selected routes have varying origin and same destination with route length of 20 kms, 12 kms and 7.1 kms respectively. The efficiency of the transportation system is evaluated on 9 parameters - velocity, Cost of vehicle &amp; infrastructure, Travel Cost, Travel Time, Capacity, Flexibility, Aesthetics, Comfort and Maintenance. The research identifies the travel distance and settlement density to be critical elements in the user decision-making process and hence are key parameters to be considered in planning for public transportation in complex metropolitan cities.